A patient suffers from congestion when filling pressure of the heart, which results from the return of blood from the body to the heart, is relatively high due to the heart's inability to effectively pump blood back out to the body. Thus, congestion is indicative of heart failure and is one factor that should be closely monitored for a heart failure patient. Congestion may be manifested in several ways in the heart failure patient's body.
One condition highly correlated with congestion is respiratory distress upon lying down. Congestion often results in the lungs becoming partially filled with fluid once the patient lies down, and the lungs maintain the partially filled state until the patient becomes upright. This filling causes the patient to have difficulty breathing while in the recumbent position, and the respiratory distress that may result from the lungs remaining filled with fluid is a good indicator of congestion.
Attempts have been made to assess congestion from observation of a patient's posture relative to his average trans-thoracic impedance, which decreases as the lungs fill with fluid. However, the average trans-thoracic impedance masks any change that might occur in the patient's respiratory patterns. Thus, average trans-thoracic impedance measurements fail to indicate the patient's level of respiratory distress that results from the recumbent position.